


Memory

by Extervus



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Bangalore tries to drink her way down memory lane, But Octane is a master at suppressing emotions, Gen, I hate how mean she is to him in the quests, Trans Octane, Trans Octane | Octavio Silva, Whether She Likes It or Not, and kinda everyone too but still, listen I just want them to be friends, so he shows up to keep Anita company, trans bangalore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25028836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Extervus/pseuds/Extervus
Summary: She reached for the bottle again, but her hand shot out as her door swung open, nearly knocking it over. She instinctively reached under her desk for the pistol she had taped to the underside, but she pulled it away just as quickly. She turned around, and was, much to her displeasure, met with a soaking wet Octane.He stood in her door way, one hand on her now open door, the other griping the door frame on the opposite side, posed as if he was just about to inform her that the entire planet was about to combust. Instead, he said, casually:“What’s up?”___My contribution to the 31 Days of Apex! Essentially, a heartfelt Bangalore and Octane fic where they don't hate each other entirely
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Memory

**Author's Note:**

> This is nowhere near my first work of writing, nor is it my first public work, but it is my first work on both the internet and on AO3, so hopefully y'all like it! Notes at the end

The whir of her ceiling fan combined with the deep thunder and prattle of rain outside filled Anita’s room as she absentmindedly flipped through an old box of photographs. Really, she hadn’t meant to bring the box with her to the Apex Complex; she only really kept the bare necessities in her room here, leaving the rest of her valuables safe in her actual apartment off base, the one she had finally saved up enough money to rent out.

‘ _Thanks to the Games, of course,’_ she thought, her lips tightening into a thin line as she did. She hated that she had to spend money that she should be saving for her passage back to the IMC home base, but she hated the thought of spending another night in this god-forsaken building with all the rookies who couldn’t afford their own place, so it had to be done. Of course, they still expected her to spend one at least one night a week at the Complex per season, since they wanted every Legend and rookie accounted for the day before a Game. Beyond that, she preferred to be sleep at home every other day of the week.

 _‘Heh. ‘Home.’ As if even that apartment could ever be home,’_ she thought bitterly. That was actually why she had this box before her now. It had been sitting at the bottom of one her duffel bags, waiting to be unpacked in her new apartment, when she had gone and thrown some clothes and other necessities over it to take with her to the Complex. She had only noticed its presence when she had finally settled in her room later that night. After a brief moment of swearing, because of course, out of all the small boxes she owned, _that_ had to be the one she accidentally brought with her, she had begun going through each picture. After about twelve, she decided she was too sober for this, and had gone out into the ‘Legends Only’ kitchen to grab a bottle of the strongest whiskey they had: a fifth of Jack, which wasn’t her favorite, but after the first few drinks she wouldn’t care. Funnily enough, it wasn’t even hers, it had been Mirage’s. She’d reimburse him later, of course. Or maybe not.

That’s how she had gotten here now: sitting at her desk, half her way into the bottle and she had only just now gotten to her teen years of the photographs. She thumbed through a picture of herself sitting on a branch of an obnoxiously tall tree, her brother Andrew (the youngest of her brother, only a couple years older than her) staring up at her from below, his grin matching her own in the picture. Based off the faded blue of the tips of her curls paired with her dark roots and equally dark lipstick, she guessed that this had been taken shortly after her punk phase, at around sixteen, and when she flipped it over neatly onto the growing stack of photographs, the date on the back of it confirmed her suspicions.

 _God. Twenty-fuckin-two years ago,_ she thought, and took another swig of whiskey. Lightning flashed from outside her window, followed almost instantaneously by dangerously loud thunder, rattling the contents of her room as she picked up the next picture. This one didn’t have her in it, but she could tell it was from the same day as the one before. It was of her two oldest brothers, Matthew and Thomas, knee deep in a pond that she recognized as the one they went out fishing in once a year, about two hours from where they lived at the time. Matthew’s, well, everything was covered in mud as he was bent over, clearly mid shake in an inevitably unsuccessful attempt at cleaning himself. Thomas, on the other, had his typical shit-eating grin on his face with mud caked on his hands, mid laugh. She smiled at that one, and set it aside. When she picked up the next, she set it down just as quickly, and took a deep swig of whiskey. As she set the bottle back down, she heard a crash from somewhere down the hall, and she screwed her eyes shut. She knew it was him, but she still prayed that it was anyone but Octane making a fool of himself. Her door was shut, though, and that was usually enough to deter him from messing with someone. Unless, of course, that someone happened to be Lifeline.

She picked up the next picture gingerly and was met with the smiling face of her grandmother. It was a different day than the previous, but according to the back, it was only a few weeks after. Her heart wrenched as she thought of her. She had died seventeen years ago, so only a few years after this picture, but her heart still ached at the thought. She sniffed, ignoring the sting behind her eyes, and set the picture down again. She reached for the bottle again, but her hand shot out as her door swung open, nearly knocking it over. She instinctively reached under her desk for the pistol she had taped to the underside, but she pulled it away just as quickly. She turned around, and was, much to her displeasure, met with a soaking wet Octane.

He stood in her door way, one hand on her now open door, the other griping the door frame on the opposite side, posed as if he was just about to inform her that the entire planet was about to combust. Instead, he said, casually:

“What’s up?”

Anita slowly reached back behind and her lifted the bottle to her lips, taking another deep swig, then pinched her the bridge of her nose with the other.

“Octane, what on God’s green earth do you want?”

He straightened and feigned exaggerated offended-ness.

“Aw, c’mon Anita, mi amiga, who’s to say I didn’t wanna just say hi?” he said, bringing a hand to his chest. Anita stared at him, quirking a brow. He sighed loudly. “Alright, okay, ya got me. I was outside taking some sick selfies in the tree that’s by the training yard entrance, ya know, for some lightning shots, and there was a pretty close one and I dropped my selfie stick and now I can’t find it in the dark.”

Anita stared at him, then opened her mouth to speak.

“And before you ask, no, I haven’t asked Ajay, she doesn’t even know. She’s with Renee right now, and she told me if I ever interrupt her meditation sessions with her, she’ll, eh, tear me limb from limb.”

Anita closed her mouth.

“Which honestly, that’d be cool as fuck, having all metal limbs. I mean, at that point, I could go all out, maybe I’d finally decide to get bottom surgery and get myself a metal di-“

Anita held her hand up and cut him off before he could continue any further.

“So, let me get this straight: you went outside, during a thunderstorm, at night, and climbed into a tree with, mind you, metal legs and a presumably metal selfie stick, to take…selfies. Do I have that correct?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning back into her wooden chair. She made a mental note to search the kitchen for some of Bloodhound’s herbal teas later, cause fuck, she was gonna need it.

“Ya, I mean, I don’t see what’s hard to get about it. Seems pretty straight forward to me.”

“I- okay, I’m not even going to explain to why that’s dangerous cause I could be here all night and I’m sure you already know,” she turned away from him and back to her stacks of photographs.

“So-“

“No, I’m not going to help you find your damn selfie stick, Octane.”

She heard the childlike sound of metal stamping against the concrete floor, and she had to bite her lip to keep from chuckling. She’d drop dead before she let Octane know that his antics _sometimes_ entertained her. Sometimes.

After a moment of silence that could only be achieved by a lack of Octavio Silva’s presence, she picked up another picture and looked it over. Of course, it had to be an up-close shot of Jackson’s smiling face, and she stared at it, bitterly, her thoughts quickly darkening and dampening as if they were like the storm outside, before coming to an abrupt halt as a voice came from right over her shoulder

“Ay, who’s that chico? He looks like he could be one of your brothers.”

Anita jumped back away from him as he spoke, once again nearly spilling the bottle of whiskey. He stood up straight and looked at her, his face neutral but his dark eyes filled with a dangerous curiosity she saw often in him, paired with something else she couldn’t quite place. Not that she cared to, especially now, as she felt her temper rise.

“Jesus, Octane, what the fuck is wrong with you?” she hissed, swiping the bottle cap from the table and placing it securely back on before placing the bottle on the floor by her feet. Octane just shrugged at her.

“I mean, a lot, I could list ‘em if ya want,” he started, and Anita let out an exasperated sigh.

“Why do you insist on doing these things? This is my private space, none of this is any of your business, _soldier_ ,” she said, shooting him a deadly glare that, apparently, fell harmlessly off him as he did nothing but stare back at her, this time, with a look she couldn’t discern at all. When he didn’t speak for a few more moments, she turned back to her desk, her head falling into her hands. She was too tipsy for this. Or maybe she was too drunk, she couldn’t really tell. She knew that Octane couldn’t help it; Ajay had explained as much when Bangalore had complained about him one day. Since then, she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, she honestly did, but it was times like these that she felt that he did stuff like this on purpose, for whatever reasons he had. Attention, she presumed. But then again, what did she know? She wasn’t a doctor, and more importantly, she wasn’t Octane. Guilt began to claw its way up from her stomach and into her chest, and with a sigh, she turned back around, ready to apologize to him when she saw that he had left. She was amazed that he had any capacity to move as quietly as he did sometimes, not even just because it was contraindicatory to him as a person, but also because he had, well, metal legs. Regardless, she turned back around and picked up the bottle from the floor, opening it back up and taking another sip. She set it down on the table, still griping it in her hand, and tried to convince herself that he was fine, that these things bounced off him like bullets, but of course the metaphor didn’t really help because, _fuck,_ he gets shot for a living.

She was jerked from her thoughts when she heard the sound of papery contents being dumped somewhere behind her, and when she turned to look, she saw Octane standing over her bed with an empty box in hand and a measly pile of photographs before him, all dumped unceremoniously onto her bed.

“Octane wh-“

“Here’s every picture I have from before I moved out of my dad’s mansion.”

Anita’s mouth snapped shut, her eyes widening. She didn’t know much about his past, only that he came from a very rich and important family, there was _no_ way that he only had that many pictures from his childhood. She glanced at her own pile pictures. She had twice as many photographs from her birth until sixteen than he had in his entire pile. Octane seemed to notice this as he continued on.

“It’s not much, I know, but it’s, ya know, it’s something,” he sat down on her bed, and she had to bite her tongue as to not chew him out about sitting on her bed while drenched. “I’m bored, and my selfie stick and phone are still lost, so I figured we could, eh, look at some family pictures together. Or whatever.”

Anita stared at him. She knew that it was a lie; he had about million other things he could be doing over this, even without his phone, but she kept her mouth shut. She watched as he kicked his feet back and forth and fiddled with a frayed edge of one of the photographs, not meeting her eyes. Finally, she grabbed a handful of pictures, both from the pile she had already gone through and from the ones she hadn’t yet (she could worry about reorganizing them later) and went over to join Octane on her bed. She sat down, carefully, on the other side of his pile of pictures. Octavio cleared his throat, then picked up a random picture. On it was a tanned woman with deep black hair and big brown eyes smiling next to a man who, apparently, opted for a more neutral look for the picture. In the woman’s arms was an infant wrapped in a green blanket, eyes shut in what Anita assumed was the calmest he had ever been in his life.

“This is when I was born,” he said simply.

Anita nodded. “This you?” she asked, pointing to the baby in the picture. Octane snorted.

“Nah, I was the one taking the picture,” he laughed, and Anita huffed out a laugh too. He quickly set that one down, then rummaged for another picture. She ignored how he kept glancing at certain pictures before tossing them aside, and she especially tried not to notice how all the ones he tossed aside had the same black-haired woman in them. Finally, he found one he was happy with, and held it up for her to see.

It was hard for Anita to parse at first, but eventually she realized that it was a picture of a young Octavio- maybe ten or so- jumping from a window with a makeshift parachute that appeared to be made of- Anita leaned closer- condom wrappers? Her eyes widened and looked to Octane for an explanation. He laughed.

“This is one of my favorites, even though this was a while before I came out as a guy, which eh… oh! I actually have a picture of my first day after coming out. My dad’s fourth wife, whatever her name was, insisted on taking a picture for the occasion,” Octavio tossed the picture he had just been holding aside without any further explanation, much to Anita’s disappointment, and sifted through the pictures until finally coming across what he was looking for. He held it up for her to see, and Bangalore couldn’t help the snort that came out from her. In the picture stood a young, much skinnier Octavio with a short, black buzzcut that looked as though he had done it himself (which, knowing him, wouldn’t surprise her at all). He stood with his hands on his hips and his eyes squeezed shut in the biggest, toothiest smile she had ever seen on him. He wore the trans flag around his shoulders, like a cape, and on his striped shirt was a pin that she couldn’t quite make out, but she assumed it was a name tag that read ‘Octavio.’

“I came out when I was fifteen, sometime in the middle of sophomore year. Or, actually, I came out to Ajay a couple of months before that, but my big reveal was a day before this picture.”

He stared at the picture longer, as if he were thinking of what to say next. She could tell his mind was going a million miles an hour, like it was known to do, so she kept quiet.

“My dad, eh, he was okay with it all, ya know. Told him my new name, my pronouns, stuff like that, and ya know, I didn’t even notice a difference after I came out to him. He just nodded and moved on. Never really talked about it again.”

Anita kept quiet a moment longer, before realizing he was done talking. She watched as his brow furrowed and his nose ever so slightly scrunched. It was a look she was all too familiar with, so she quickly dug through her pictures and pulled an older one out.

“This was, uh,” she started, clearing her throat then flipping the picture over quickly to read the back, “this was when I was fourteen. I was kinda goin’ through a phase here, but this was shortly after I came out, too.” Octavio grinned as his eyes widened in delight as she showed him the picture. He opened his mouth to speak, then paused, realizing what she had just said.

“’Came out?’ Like, as a lesbian?” he asked, and Anita chuckled.

“Nah, I never really had to come out about that, everyone just kinda already knew. This was…this was shortly after I came out as trans, too.”

Octane raised his brows at that, his mouth slightly agape, then turned to look at the picture a bit closer. It was only then that she realized she had picked a picture that had Jackson in the background, but she bit her lip and tried to keep the tightening feeling that griped her heart at bay. Instead, she focused on her past self. This was right at the beginning of her punk phase: she had deep, blue hair, dark eye shadow and smeared lipstick. She wore a black and pink band shirt, one of the ones from the 2350’s during the fifth punk revival era since punk had originally started hundreds of years before that. She had on torn, white skinny jeans with a studded belt and equally studded black, combat boots. And the cherry on top? Hot pink fingerless gloves. She cringed at the site, but she knew Octane would get a kick out of it.

“Amiga…you were so badass!” Octavio damn near shouted, and Anita grinned.

“What, you’re saying I’m not badass now?” she asked.

“I mean, you’re badass now but you’re, like, a different badass. _This,_ though,” he grabbed the photograph out of her hands, pointing at her younger self, “this is the look of someone who does not give a fuck about anyone or anything.”

“Hey, if the rookies’ reactions to me are any indication, I’d say people still get that vibe from me,” Anita argued, and Octane laughed. He started to hand the picture back to Anita, then paused as he looked at it closer.

“Who’s that in the background?”

Anita’s heart dropped, and before she could stop herself, she quickly snatched the photograph from Octane’s hand. He leaned back away from her, and she tried to give him her best apologetic look, which she was sure just kind of looked like indifference.

“That’s my brother, Jackson. I was- I’m closer to him more than any of my other brothers, but don’t let him know I ever said that, it’ll go to his head,” she said quietly. Octane frowned.

“I thought you brother was dead?”

“He’s not dead,” she snapped, then upon seeing Octane’s face, she sighed, “we’ve just…lost contact. I’ll find him soon enough, once I get enough money playin’ in the games to afford a trip back home.”

Anita hated the look of realization that flashed across his face, but before she could dwell on it further, he had his hand on her shoulder.

“You’ll find him, amiga. If you’re as determined outside of the ring as you are in it, then I know nothing will stop you from getting both you and him home. And hey, if you ever need some extra firepower,” he clicked his tongue and shot her finger guns, and she huffed out a laugh. “I’m always down for some excitement.”

“Thanks, Silva, that means a lot. If I ever have a need some legs blown off for me, I’ll know who to turn to,” she said, and Octavio howled. He started to say more, but a shout from the hallway interrupted him.

“SILVA WHERE ARE YUH? YUH BETTA GET YUH ASS OUT HERE RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR-”

Anita smirked at Octane with a quirk of her brow, and he laughed.

“Alright, I should prolly go before Ajay enlists Bloodhound to track me down,” Octane said with a faux shudder, and he began gathering up his photographs.

“And, uh, Silva,” Octavio looked up when she spoke, but she didn’t say anything more. Finally, he nodded.

“No need to thank me, amiga,” he said, and Anita let out a silent sigh of relief. He turned to leave, but she grabbed his arm before he could.

“Oh, and if you tell anyone I had a punk phase, Ajay scolding you will be the least of your concerns,” she said, glaring, but Octavio just laughed. With a salute and a nod, he raced out of her room, laughing loudly and wildly, as Ajay called after him.

Anita gathered up her pictures and placed them all in her box. She could organize them tomorrow, she told herself, and she set it back in her duffel bag. She considered returning Mirage’s ‘borrowed’ whiskey, but she decided she didn’t want to have to face Lifeline’s wrath when she found out the stunt Octane had pulled. Plus, the bottle was mostly empty anyways. Instead, she closed it up and set it on her desk for her to enjoy another night. Or, until Mirage noticed it was gone and inevitably would try to run an investigation on who stole it.

After finally getting ready for bed and preparing what she'd need for tomorrow's game, she switched off her lamp and crawled into bed, and as sleep overcame her, she realized it had already stopped storming.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:
> 
> 1\. I used a random generator to pick how many characters (minimum) to write about, and who to write about, cause I wanted this to be pure practice. The results I got are, obviously, a minimum of 2 characters and Octane and Bangalore! So here we are
> 
> 2\. Don't mind me as I throw pretty much all of my own ADD/ADHD experiences onto Octane
> 
> 3\. My Octanes and Bangalores are always trans. Periodt
> 
> 4\. Hopefully I didn't get too OOC, I haven't written anything in full for Apex yet, only small, personal tidbits here and there, so here we are
> 
> 5\. Oh, and this takes place before any of the quests, as well as before Revenant and Loba. Probably before Crypto, too, though, since they still use King's Canyon in this (not mentioned but that's how I wrote it ig)


End file.
